COCAINE DEFENDANT SAYS HE, INFORMANT USED DRUGS TOGETHER

A Centerville man charged with cocaine violations testified Thursday afternoon that he and the government's informant were sexually intimate and used cocaine together.

M.K. Fadel testified of his involvement with government informant Kay Sugar during his U.S. District Court trial on drug charges.More than a year ago, U.S. District Chief Judge Bruce S. Jenkins dismissed the charges against Fadel, ruling he had been entrapped. But a federal appeals reversed Jenkins and sent the case back for trial.

The defendant told of obtaining some of the illegal drug for her, which Sugar said she would sell in an attempt to help herself in business. The rest of the drug they planned to use that evening, he said.

After he arrived with the first bag of cocaine, Fadel said, she took some of it, supposedly for a sale. The rest they intended to use themselves, he said.

Sugar told him to make himself comfortable at her home, then left to take an eighth of an ounce of the drug to a supposed customer, Fadel said.

He said he went to her stove and "started cooking cocaine for me to smoke." Cooking it is a method of heating it with baking soda, making the powdery drug into a hard chunk called crack.

"It was the first time that I had cooked it," he said.

Sugar returned with a bottle of wine and said the "customer" was interested in buying more, Fadel said under questioning by his lawyer, Loni DeLand.

Because Sugar's children were home, they went to a neighbor's place. Fadel said Sugar "had the run" of that place.

There they watched a movie on the VCR, used cocaine and had sexual relations, he said.

"She said she didn't want to smoke it; she wanted to toot it up (inhale through the nose)," Fadel said.

She took cocaine that Fadel had not cooked and "dumped some cocaine out of the bottle onto the glass, came up with a razor blade . . . and chopped it up."

Then she spread the cocaine into lines. The more it is spread out, he said, the easier it is to absorb through the lining of the nose.

"You cut it into lines. Now you have this chopped cocaine in a pile. If I may . . . ," he said, using a chalkboard to diagram for the jury how the drug is divided.

Fadel said he rolled up a piece of paper money and handed it to her.

"What'd she do?" asked DeLand.

"Snorted the cocaine. She put the dollar bill to her nose," placed the other end on the cocaine and inhaled, he said.

A day or two later, she tried to get him to supply more, he said. She claimed the amount she sold wasn't enough to allow her to set up in business.

Fadel said that at first he said no, but then thought that if he cared for this woman, he could stick his neck out for her again.